Re-Constructing a Graduate Community at Large:
The Long-Distance ABD Experiment

[Now in Progress]

Working on your dissertation at a long distance from your home university
makes for its own set of problems and stresses, namely, the loss of camaraderie
and community. The organization "gradsatlarge" was founded
with the aspiration that graduates working at this distance would: re-connect;
make their presence, concerns, and survival tactics known; and be academically
re-invigorated to maintain accountability for their progress toward completion
in a community of at-a-distance peers.

The Community

Jennifer Marie
Powers,
Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Cameron J. Turner,
Department of Mechanical Engineering

Katrinka
Cleora, Caroline Travis Rankin, and
Joel Matthew
Silverman

Our Story

If as David Sternberg relates in his well-known
survival guide for Doctoral Candidates that everyone likely knows at
least one story of a struggling or failed ABD ("all but dissertation"),
one of those stories might well be that of a failed long-distance ABD,
whose physical separation from the university at the critical juncture
of Doctoral Candidacy led to non-completion or termination. While discrediting stories
circulate, we would like to recount for a university community disenchanted
by the "at a distance" candidate and, specifically, for those
presently at that distance the stories of six (potentially) successful
graduates and the self-driven organization that is allowing us to see
the dissertation at the end of being ABD.

Before we were a "we"--that is, six ABDs sharing the goal
of completion--we were six individual candidates unaware of our common
presence and predicaments and, as was the case for many of us, potential
scholars who had made the critical mental disconnect from our community
of peers and mentors. And we were, as unfortunately perceived by
that community, a dispersed and unaccounted for "at large" subset
of ABD's with supposed little chance for advancement beyond candidacy.

"I've been a long-distance ABD for the last year,
and I think I've been pretty successful at it. While long-distance,
I landed my dream job and wrote my entire dissertation."

While not being able to reconstruct the home university
stone by stone to find the driving force to produce within its halls,
what we have done or hope to do with our present mechanism in place
is to re-create the essence of it--particularly by maintaining an organized
space where peer meets peer and peer holds peer accountable for turning
out the pages. Our
grass roots organization was initially formed as an offshoot of a listserv
hosted by the University of Texas' Intellectual Entrepreneurship
initiative (IE), that is, the frequented "DISSLIST." This
list serves dissertation writers and was organized under the rubric and
ideology of undergraduate and graduate professionalization via self-accountability
and ownership of learning--among other IE guiding principles.

The spirit of the educational model was contagious,
for we took the context of the community engagement that we found on "DISSLIST" and
made it our own: it was then that we formed "gradsatlarge" ABD
writing group, committed to a complete dissertation draft by the summer's
end--a description now too narrow for what it has or could potentially
become. "Gradsatlarge" is heading towards a broader
and imagined community supporting a continual rotation of semester workgroups
and where long-distance ABD's are made aware of and challenged by each
other on a very personal basis to commit to writing and research goals.

"I've had what I perceive as
a tremendously rough time adjusting to the "distance" issue.
(FYI: I think it has been just as frustrating for my advisor.) Although
distance has taught me much about independence, it has been near
impossible trying to have routine meaningful exchanges with each
of my committee members. Sometimes I get terse replies to my
email and sometimes I get no reply at all. Nonetheless, it
is my responsibility to prompt such exchanges if I am in need of
help. If one of them refuses to answer (or forgets), then it
is my responsibility to remind them of my need."

Our Operation

In form, it takes up a real part of cyber space, as a community organization
in the web network system "Blackboard" at the University of
Texas (and at other universities), providing each student and faculty
member with a pre-formulated website, dynamically linking student and
professor colleagues. On this system, "gradsatlarge" operates
as an information base to inform ABD's of others of their kind; a bulletin
board where members post overall project plans, weekly timelines, and
questions on professional strategies and style etc.; and--most significantly--as
a medium for a real-time weekly dialogue or collaboration, where members
self-evaluate their progress and discuss relevant issues.

Sharing Lessons, Tips and Advice

As a means of providing the general community with a glimpse into
our organization and in the hopes of sharing our lessons learned with
other ABDs, we have collected advice and practical tips from long-distance
ABDs as well as topics of interest from our weekly "gradsatlarge" collaboration
sessions. These entries are organized by topic below.

If you are a long-distance ABD affiliated with
UT who would like to join our working community, contact either:
Jennifer at j.powers@mail.utexas.edu
or
Cameron at camturner@mail.utexas.edu.
The group asks that all members submit project
abstracts and project a finishing date for a complete draft.